mrs.deane dreaming: wasma mansour

If you want to meet Saudi ex-pats in Lon­don, you should hang out at L’Opera cafe. That is one of the things I learned from Wasma Mansour’s Field­notes, where she keeps updates and col­lects infor­ma­tion about her ongo­ing research project Sin­gle Saudi Women. Wasma is her­self Saudi, a pho­tog­ra­pher, pre­sum­ably sin­gle (although I might be wrong) and she moved to Lon­don in 2007. Since she is quite artic­u­late about her work, I am quot­ing from the intro­duc­tory text at length.

“Since 2008, my pho­tog­ra­phy explored the spa­tial and mate­r­ial con­struc­tions of Saudi women who do not fit the stereo­type: women who have cho­sen to live alone despite their belong­ing to a cul­ture where male pres­ence, shap­ing lives and spaces, is the norm. Pic­to­r­ial con­ven­tions in mass media exhib­ited recur­ring visual tropes that stereo­type and limit Saudi women to being placed under two cat­e­gories: she is either pas­sive, docile and there­fore in cri­sis, or defi­ant, rebel­lious and con­se­quently lib­er­ated. The women I’ve met and pho­tographed revealed a com­plex set of nego­ti­a­tions made to rec­on­cile with their iden­ti­ties and assert their sense of indi­vid­u­al­ism. My work inter­ro­gates these two polar exis­tences by show­ing that the par­tic­i­pants exist and func­tion in a wide area between them?

It could be argued by some that my choice of appa­ra­tus is polit­i­cally moti­vated. Espe­cially since issues con­cern­ing Saudi women’s vis­i­bil­ity have been a sub­ject of heated debates of two oppos­ing and equally hege­monic head­ings: ‘lib­er­a­tion’ and ‘dom­i­na­tion’. I should clar­ify that the posi­tion I hold both as pho­tog­ra­pher and cit­i­zen belongs to nei­ther camps. The hope and aim of my project from the out­set is to bring forth an alter­na­tive, and more encom­pass­ing, view of what it means to be a sin­gle Saudi woman.”

The project is exten­sive, and still grow­ing. It is divided in sev­eral sub­sec­tions, and includes por­traits of the women in their homes, still lives of their inte­ri­ors, veils in bags shot in the stu­dio, and dip­tychs. Even­tu­ally the doc­u­men­ta­tion will include pho­tographs taken by the women them­selves, as well as writ­ten notes. The pho­tog­ra­phy is what I would call straight doc­u­men­tary in the sense that Man­sour aims to record with­out fur­ther ado the liv­ing con­di­tions of these women with the aim of learn­ing some­thing from the images, for instance “how much of their pre­vi­ous gender-related Saudi iden­ti­ties would sur­face, and to what degree do these women trans­gress their identities”.

We are not look­ing at free flow­ing, lyri­cal impres­sions, but at a body of work done with almost sci­en­tific pre­ci­sion. In her approach towards the par­tic­i­pants Man­sour is trans­par­ent and respon­si­ble, con­stantly aim­ing to medi­ate in her images the mul­ti­far­i­ous­ness of their indi­vid­ual lives. The use of the large for­mat cam­era for the inte­rior still lives makes for very con­trolled images. I imag­ine that these ele­ments — con­trol, medi­a­tion, respon­si­bil­ity and trans­parency — are all skills that ben­e­fit women grow­ing up in soci­eties like Saudi Ara­bia, where they are con­stantly forced to nego­ti­ate about and answer for their move­ments on a daily basis. That is per­haps why the notion of a home with its chaos of being lived in is so appeal­ing to her, as a place where these sin­gle Saudi women are alone and rel­a­tively free to do what­ever they feel like doing “an und für sich”, to quote good old Immanuel Kant.

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It sounds a bit dry per­haps, but I guess that’s because this pro­gram wants to appeal to the aca­d­e­m­i­cally inclined among the cura­tors? In any case, it’s an afford­able oppor­tu­nity for young cura­tors with over three years of work­ing expe­ri­ence. Dead­line com­ing up March 20th!

“Fol­low­ing ICI’s Cura­to­r­ial Inten­sive in Addis Ababa with the Zoma Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (ZCAC) in 2014, and in Johan­nes­burg with The Bag Fac­tory Artists’ Stu­dios in 2013, ICI con­tin­ues its com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing cura­to­r­ial train­ing in Africa, and to devel­op­ing regional net­works, with the Cura­to­r­ial Inten­sive in Mar­rakech. The pro­gram will focus on the cul­tural land­scape of West Africa and the Maghreb while also explor­ing the role of cura­tors work­ing for both local and inter­na­tional audi­ences. The sem­i­nars of this pro­gram will be con­ducted mostly in Eng­lish, but also in Ara­bic and French. Trans­la­tion will be avail­able when nec­es­sary, but work­ing pro­fi­ciency in Eng­lish is essen­tial and famil­iar­ity with more than one lan­guage is rec­om­mended. “

George Arbid, King­dom of Bahrain National Par­tic­i­pa­tion, Bien­nale di Venezia 2014Fundamentalists and Other Arab Modernisms.Architecture from the Arab World 1914–2014 Bahrain Min­istry of Cul­ture, Bahrain; Arab Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture, Beirut

Ste­fano Graziani pointed me to a Call for Cap­tions by the Cana­dian Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture (CCA), an inter­est­ing premise also with a view on the cur­rent debates sur­rounded the lat­est WPP awards:

“We’re inter­ested in how cap­tions influ­ence the way we read pho­tographs. Cap­tions can cloud and clar­ify. They can attack an image or stand apart, appar­ently neu­tral and trans­par­ent. They might seem tran­quil, but can be fraught. They are def­i­nitely rela­tional things. They involve an inter­ac­tion, and we think the best way to con­tinue to think about cap­tions is to invite you to join a con­ver­sa­tion with us.“

Mon­treal weather reports tell me it’s cold out­side… but you can stay warm at the open­ing of the Art Souter­rain fes­ti­val tonight, where Stead Bureau cos­mo­naut Mari Bas­ta­shevski takes you on a tour through the very spe­cial realm of state sur­veil­lance in inter­net hyper­space. And to cel­e­brate this happy occa­sion, let’s remem­ber the cheer­ful lyrics of the Red Dwarf theme song!

I’ll pack my bags and head into hyper­spaceWhere I’ll suc­ceed at time-warp speedSpend my days in ultra­vi­o­let raysFun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun.

We’ll lock on course straight through the uni­verseYou and me and the galaxyReach the stage where hyper-drive’s engagedFun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun,Fun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun. … See MoreSee Less